


Sequoia

by MissBrainProblems



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21613825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissBrainProblems/pseuds/MissBrainProblems
Summary: A young orphan girl struggles with isolation and anxiety. Yet another snippet featuring one of my OCs, Emily Forester.
Kudos: 8





	Sequoia

Emily was scared, and she didn't know what to do; rather, Emily was scared _because_ she didn't know what to do. It had been a month or two since she had gained her powers - the days and weeks tended to blend together when one was on the run, and she couldn't be certain exactly how much time had actually passed - and thus it had been a month or two since she had killed two of her classmates, had been a month or two of her spending every waking hour - and some sleeping hours - avoiding the police, avoiding the Wards and the Protectorate, and avoiding the glances of people on the street and in stores that suggested that they might have recognized her from the news or the PRT announcements.

They had tried to tell her, of course, that what happened to the other two girls wasn't her fault, that the PRT had a policy of amnesty for trigger-related injuries and deaths; they had tried to tell her, of course, that they just wanted Emily to come with them so that they could set the record straight on what had happened, so that they could induct her into the Wards, albeit on a probationary status, and that she wouldn't be punished for the killing of her classmates. It was, of course, a load of complete and utter _crap_ , and Emily Forester - in spite of what some people might have thought about her - was _not_ stupid enough to be fooled by their lies. No matter what they said, Emily _knew_ that the only thing that awaited people like her, to people who had done the things that she had done, was a one-way ticket to the Birdcage. Emily additionally knew that a young teenage girl like her - no matter what powers she might have had - would never survive in a place like the Birdcage; it was, then, a matter of _survival_ that she not get caught by the PRT, a quite literal matter of life and death that she not get brought in by the Wards or the Protectorate.

That being said, it wasn't like she had much of a plan. All that Emily had been doing since she had turned fugitive was try and move further west away from Norrisburg, where her journey had started; Philadelphia's PRT department was too large and well-organized for her liking, and she hoped that Pittsburgh's Protectorate and Wards wouldn't be nearly as much of a threat as the potential of facing down powerhouses like Chevalier or Rime, if they ever decided to go out into the field against Emily. Of course, it wasn't as if she even was "Emily" to most people by that point. When push came to shove the first time that a group of Wards intercepted her, Emily offered them the name "Sapling" as her so-called "secret identity"; it wasn't as if her real name and face hadn't been plastered all over the news, of course, so she wasn't even sure why they had pressured her into providing them with a cape-name like that. Just more nonsense from people with authority, Emily supposed, just more strong-arming, just more coercion, just more abuse, just more...

"Miss? Can I help you?" The convenience store clerk - an old lady, clearly with no trace of patience in her body - called out to Emily as the girl stood there, lost in her thoughts; the last customer had apparently finished their transaction when Emily wasn't looking.

"Erm. Yes. Sorry. So sorry. Erm. Here." Speaking mostly in stilted, nervous monosyllabics, Emily dropped a pile of convenience store junk food accompanied by a few toiletries onto the counter; the girl's power meant that she didn't necessarily have to eat by that point, could just merge with a tree and use its photosynthesis and stored energy, but Emily felt the need to continue doing things that made her feel "human", even so.

The clerk, meanwhile, gave Emily a sharp, suspicious look that made the mousy teenager shift around uncomfortably; Emily knew that she must have appeared shady, what with the baggy sweater she wore, its hood pulled low over her face, barely allowing Emily's junky glasses to peek out from underneath. "Is it that cold outside? I figured it'd be warming up more, what with it being June, and all." Was it already June? The incident had happened back in early April, so Emily supposed that it really had been at least two months by that point. Wait, no, that wasn't the important part; the way that the old woman stared down at Emily, the way that she clearly _knew_ that something was up with the girl, _that_ was what was important at that moment.

"Oh. Uhm. I have, uh. Lower than normal body temperature. Yeah." It was one of the flimsiest lies that Emily had ever told, and the girl couldn't do much but fidget back and forth anxiously as the slow, steady beeping sound of her items being scanned echoed throughout the mostly empty convenience store. Beep. Beep. Beep. The clerk continued to watch Emily, even as they continued loading the girl's purchases into plastic bags.

Once the final item had been scanned and put away, the old woman stood there for several silent moments, crossing her arms and intensifying her gaze as she continued staring at Emily; finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the clerk spoke up, her voice hard and authoritative. "Alright, kid. I'm going to need you to pull your hood off before I let you buy any of this stuff. Safety concerns, yeah?"

God _damnit_. Why was everyone always like that?! Why couldn't they just leave Emily alone?! Why did they always have to make just _living_ be so difficult for her?! The girl felt herself immediately begin to hyperventilate, as one hand instinctively reached into her pocket to grab onto the seed that never left her side. As her anxiety increased, Emily could feel her power pulse, letting her know that it was there if she wanted to use it. Did she want to use it? She didn't want to hurt the lady - even if she was being mean to her, like everybody else always was - but she couldn't reveal herself, couldn't let her see the face of the dinky orphan girl that had been a fugitive from the PRT for months by that point, couldn't just out herself like that, and more importantly, why was the clerk being mean to her?! Why was _everyone_ always so unfair to her?! Why?! _Why?!_

"No." Emily's voice was quiet and weak, but still carried her frustration and anger along with it; the seed in her grasp began to grow, covering her hand in a living greenwood gauntlet.

"I'm sorry?" The clerk had an incredulous look on her face, letting out a scoff before continuing. "No? No, you won't take off your hood? Listen here, you little brat, I don't know what your deal is, but-" The old woman reached across the counter to grab a hold of Emily's hood, yanking it back to reveal the girl's mussy brown hair and furious, scowling face.

"I said, _no!"_ With a shout, Emily shot her hand out, tendrils of roots and branches and vines wrapping around the clerk's body, an expression of terror and fright crossing the old woman's face. "Stop being mean to me!" Hot tears ran down Emily's face, as one of the branches picked up the bag that her purchases were in, bringing it back to where the orphan girl was. "I just wanted to buy some food! That's all I wanted to do! So why are you being mean to me?!" The vines squeezed down tightly onto the clerk, before throwing her back into a rack of cigarettes; the force of the old woman's form slamming against the wall caused a few bottle of liquor to fall from the top shelf, including one that crashed directly onto the clerk's head. As blood began to trickle down her victim's face, Emily retracted her roots back into the seed, a look of sheer horror on her face. "I'm sorry." The old woman was out cold, but Emily apologized anyway. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just wanted to buy food. That's all I wanted to do. I'm sorry." The young girl scrambled around in her wallet, pulling out five twenty dollar bills and slapping them down onto the counter; Emily hoped, at least, that her payment would cover her items as well as the damage she had caused. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry!"

With another flurry of sobbed apologies, Emily dashed out of the store, nearly colliding with a middle aged man that was entering at the same time that she was leaving. "Hey! Watch where you're going, brat!" As the man reprimanded her, Emily simply ran, trying to make as much distance between her and the convenience store before the new customer noticed what Emily had done in there; it was only a few seconds later, though, that the girl heard a gruff voice call after her. "Hey! You! Get back here! What did you do to her?! Hey!" Emily picked up her pace, desperately - ever so desperately - trying to get away, trying to get away from _everything_.

~~\----------~~

A park in the middle of an off-the-radar town like Altoona was probably an apt place for Emily to hide out for the night, and the fact that the park was dark with plenty of trees as well as real grass in the area meant that it would be a perfect battlefield for the girl if someone _did_ manage to catch her. At that particular moment, though, Emily wasn't concerned about much beyond morosely biting down on the chips, candy, and sandwiches that she had bought from the convenience store; given that she had spent the last week or two in forests and the rural Pennsylvanian countryside, Emily _delighted_ in being able to eat real, human food, even if the events from earlier in the evening still weighed heavy in her mind. She supposed that staying in the same city where she had just committed assault with a parahuman ability might not have been the safest thing to do, but... She felt that she didn't have the energy to just rush right back out into the woods, and felt like she _needed_ to spend some time in town, if only to ground herself in civilization for a night or two.

Even with that in mind, though, Emily still sought out the comfort and peace that came with using her power. As she placed a sandwich wrapper in a nearby trashcan, the girl sat down on the grass, crossing her legs before placing a hand down onto the ground. In a second, every bit of information that she could ever ask for about every plant in the park was at her fingertips; she even felt a tree or two from surrounding residential yards, their roots having interconnected with those of the plants in the park. Emily knew that, if she wanted to, she could take control of all of the trees and grasses and flowers and everything else within the park, manipulate them and make them grow wildly and even do some things that plants most _certainly_ are not supposed to do under normal circumstances. More than the power she had over them, though, Emily just enjoyed allowing herself to be washed away underneath the tide of the plant-senses that she tapped into, allowing herself to simply feel the way that they recognized the night time, felt the moisture in the ground, the carbon dioxide in the air, all of the nutrients that the plants needed to do their plant-things. Where-as humans were mean, aggressive, frustrating, and just all around unpleasant, Emily delighted in the way that plants were so peaceful, friendly by default, without possessing any emotions or meanness to speak of.

"Sapling." It was delightful enough that Emily hadn't noticed the three Philadelphian Wards flying through the air until they landed on the grass, prompting something resembling a stress reaction from the plants. "We know about what you did, earlier. At the convenience store, with the clerk." Emily didn't bother opening her eyes, didn't bother looking at the bullies that had come to harass her yet again. "There's only so much amnesty the PRT can give you, Sapling. There's only so much patience the Director has before he decides to stop playing around, and really try to bring you in." God damned emotion detectors; Emily silently kicked herself at that lapse in judgment, having forgotten that the captain of the Philadelphia Wards could suss her out no matter where she was, as long as he knew her general location. "Please, Sapling. I know you're a good person. You're scared, and you have every right to be. But you _need_ to come back with us."

"Scared?" As Emily spoke, the grass in the park began to grow slowly, prompting the Wards to tense up. "Yeah. You're right. I'm scared. I'm _terrified_." The girl grabbed onto the seed in her pocket, and felt greenwood armor start to grow around her skin, underneath her clothes. "Do you want to know why I had to hurt that old lady in the store? It was because she wouldn't _leave me alone!_ " Emily grit her teeth, standing up off of the ground as tree branches began to grow toward her and the Wards, and her armor encompassed her entire body. "I just wanted to buy some food, but she started being mean to me! Just like _you_ people!" She jabbed an accusatory finger toward the Wards, the digit covered in living wood. "I just want to be left alone! Why is that so hard to understand?! Why are you turning me into a criminal, making me into a fugitive?! I don't want _any_ of this! I don't want to join the Wards, I don't want to go to the Birdcage, I don't... I don't... Please!" The greenwood tight against her face, the girl's tears poured out of the eyeholes of her mask, trickling down her armor. "Please, just leave me alone!"

As his subordinates readied for combat, the Wards captain - Avalon, if Emily remembered correctly, though it wasn't as if she _cared_ what those _jerks_ were called - held his hands up toward Emily plaintively. "Sapling. Please stop using your power. We aren't going to take you to the Birdcage, we've told you that many times now. But right now, we feel like we're threatened, and that means that we might have to take action. We don't want to do that, Sapling. _I_ don't want to do that to you, Sapling. So _please_ , stop using your power. Let's talk this out, okay?"

"No..." Just like in the convenience store, a small, frail tone carried along fury and despair. "No! I'm not going to do what you say! I'm not going to do what _anyone_ says anymore!" The grass in the park grew several feet tall, blocking Emily's view of the Wards, as well as their view of her. "I've done what other people have told me to do all my life! I'm not going to do that anymore!" Even if she couldn't see her opponents with her own, human eyes, though, she could still sense where they were, based off of where the grass bent and folded. "You're just like everyone else! You're just another bunch of _bullies!_ " Roots and branches grew up underneath the Wards; unfortunately, Sapling's power worked slower on more "complex" plants, and on plants whose "source" was further away from her, and thus the heroes easily dodged her attempts at trapping them. "Just go away! Just leave me alone! _Please!_ "

Avalon had conjured his hardlight sword, and began slicing through the grass with it. The pyrokinetic on their team - Hothead, Emily recalled - used his burning hands to bluntly cut through Emily's barriers in a similar manner; thankfully, the plants were all wet and green enough that Hothead wasn't about to start an actual blaze, right there in the middle of the park. Their other flier apart from Avalon - a psychokinetic by the name of Juniper - had escaped Emily's maze of grass at some point, and was no longer within the plant-master's sensory range. The plants screamed out in pain as they were harmed, albeit in a way that most humans would be hard pressed to recognize; in the two months that Emily had spent becoming intimately familiar with the inner lives of plants, though, she recognized their unique sense of agony, and their suffering only drove her anger even higher.

Emily considered merging with one of the plants, in an attempt to hide herself from the heroes; at the same time, though, she knew that the Wards would be more than willing to spend all night checking every blade of grass, every sprouting flower, and every tree in the park for her hiding spot, and since there was no connection to plants further away, there was no route by which Emily could meaningfully flee if she melded with something in the park. Instead, she opted for the classic escape strategy, and simply _ran_ while Avalon and Hothead were busy slashing through her plants. A stark feeling of emptiness shot through Emily the moment she was out of the park, though, as her connection to all of the plants back there was cut off, reducing her senses to only her own human ones.

"She's over here!" Terror struck Emily's heart as she looked up to see Juniper in the air, pointing toward where she was. The girl was well aware how fast the psychokinetic could fly, but Emily had to _try_ to get away, even so; her frail, weak legs were partially enhanced by the living wood that constituted her armor, but they still carried her far, far too slow for her liking. Sapling looked around desperately for something she could meld with, some plant that wasn't just a lawn or a tree in somebody's yard, some piece of vegetation that she could reasonably assume was connected to plants further away, that she could transport to, wait for the travel fatigue to wear off, and then _escape_ from her harassers.

There. Something like a canal, with water plants floating on top of it; aquatic vegetation was always much harder for her to manipulate, but Emily still knew that she could get away if she melded with those plants, knew that she'd be able to transport far down the waterway to something a mile or two away, if only she could get there, if only she could... As Emily jumped off the bridge toward the canal, she felt a pair of psychokinetically enhanced arms grab onto her. "No!" Try as the girl might, though, not even her greenwood enhanced body had enough strength to go up against Juniper's power. "No, no, no, no!" Emily struggled, struggled for all she was worth, but it was pointless, futile.

"Sapling." As Juniper carried her off to where Avalon and Hothead were, the Wards captain had a sad, dour look on his face underneath his domino mask. "I really didn't want to do this. I'm sorry, but it has to be done, for your safety and for ours." Emily screamed and flailed in Juniper's grasp as Avalon brought his hardlight sword up to Sapling's chest, before sinking it in, and then... Nothing. Quite literally, nothing. Rather, Emily's emotions were reduced to nothing, as Avalon's sword had "severed" her feelings; the girl's face went blank, her greenwood suit vanished, and her desperate fighting ceased, as she went limp in Juniper's arms. With a frown, Avalon stared at Sapling for several long, silent moments, before he gestured to his team mates. "Come on. Let's get going. Just glad this is finally-"

A tiger crashed into Avalon and Hothead, throwing them down onto the road before disappearing in a puff of smoke a second later from a simple smack by the pyrokinetic Ward. "Now now, children. Is that _really_ the proper way to treat a young lady?" A man dressed like a fifties lounge singer strode into view, flanked by three team mates. "Perhaps you should be taught some manners?" With a smirk, he opened his mouth, and began to sing; as he did so, several musical notes flew out of his mouth, rushing toward the Wards.

"Sinatra! What the hell are you doing here?!" Avalon deflected Sinatra's attack with his sword, while Juniper and Hothead busied themselves with more phantom animals being summoned by a raggedy looking young boy.

Taking a moment to recover from using his ability, Sinatra smiled as he explained himself. "We've been watching Sapling for a while, and we know how desperately lonely and afraid she is." Emily, lying on the asphalt, turned to look at Sinatra, her eyes still devoid of any sense of emotion; with a frown, the suited man turned back to Avalon, glaring at the Wards captain. "Your ability is monstrous, Avalon. I do hope that you know that." As Sinatra breathed in for another barrage of musical notes, one of his other team mates - a young blonde woman in a doctor's coat - pointed a syringe gun at the heroes, and began firing off auto-injectors in their direction.

"It was for her own good! She wouldn't cooperate with us!" As Avalon attempted to block the doctor woman's syringes, a phantom gorilla threw him into a nearby fence, causing him to crash through into a nearby yard and eliciting screams from the civilians inside of the house.

"I can't blame her for not cooperating with you, Avalon, when you're willing to obliterate her emotions like that." Sinatra sung another few notes, that rushed to where Avalon was struggling to stand up, battering the Wards captain into the dirt yet again. "Maybe if the PRT didn't make a habit of harassing girls that simply want to be _left alone_ -" Sinatra looked pointedly at the semi-catatonic Emily as he spoke. "-then you wouldn't have had an issue with dear, precious Sapling here." As one of the doctor's syringes hit Juniper - the Ward's psychokinetic field not capable of stopping the needle from jabbing into her skin - the girl in question fell unconscious in a second; Hothead himself collapsed a moment later, a man in a full-body black suit appearing out of nowhere behind him, a raised hand suggesting that a chop had been delivered to the back of the pyrokinetic's head. As the last Ward was defeated, Sinatra looked around the battlefield with a frown, before his eyes settled on Emily again. "Let's go. They might have reinforcements on the way." The suited man picked up Emily, the young girl barely reacting as she found herself being hauled off by a group of strange parahumans.

~~\----------~~

It had been an hour or so since Emily, Sinatra, and the rest of the man's team had arrived at the hotel room, when the girl's emotions returned in a sudden flood; hyperventilating, Emily looked around the room at the other parahumans, eyes wide with fear. "What... What do you want with me? Who are you people? I... I..." The girl reached around in her sweatshirt for the seed that she always had on her, only to find that there was not a single ounce of plant matter anywhere on her person. "Please..." As Emily's expression turned to despair, tears began to form in her eyes. "Please don't hurt me. Just let me go. Whatever I did, I'm sorry, just-"

"Shh. Shh. It's okay, Sapling. We're not going to hurt you." The suited man had a calm, comforting smile on his face as he planted a hand on the girl's shoulder. "And we'll let you go, if you want us to. But I want you to hear me out on my offer first, okay? If you don't want even that, though, you can leave, right now." With a gesture, the doctor from before - in civilian clothes, at that point - unbolted the hotel room door, stepping away from it and offering Emily a path if she wanted to take it. "See? None of us will stop you. We'll let you do what you want to do, okay?"

Emily took several deep breaths with closed eyes, before looking at Sinatra and his team mates again. "Okay. But, uhm. You didn't answer my question." With a frown and a nervous furrowing of brows, Emily pulled herself into a proper sitting position on the bed she had been laid on. "Who... Who are you people? I, uhm. I think it's polite to, erm. Introduce ourselves before talking, and, uhm. I think you already know who I am?"

Sinatra smiled again, gently squeezing on Emily's shoulder before pulling back. "You're right, Sapling dearest. We've been rude, and I apologize for that. My name is Sinatra, and this is the Rat Pack."

As the man motioned toward the doctor, she smiled and gave a deep, dramatic bow. "My name is Vaccine, at your service."

The ratty-looking boy, that time, who spoke in a scruffy voice that matched his appearance. "Carnival."

A man with a shaved head that Emily could only assume had been the one in the full body suit from before rounded out the introductions. "Shadow. Please don't make fun of it. The PRT gave it to me before I could come up with one on my own, and I haven't been able to shake it, since."

Sinatra laughed a little bit, before turning back to Emily. "There you go, Sapling dearest. Is there anything else you wanted, before we continued?" The girl contorted her face in thought for several seconds as she watched Sinatra, before shaking her head. "Very well, then. Thank you for your patience, Sapling. Truly, thank you." The way that the man smiled made Emily's heart thump out of beat for a moment or two; it wasn't any sort of romantic feeling that stirred in her chest, but more just... Peace. "Now then, Sapling, here's my offer. If you'd want, I would like to extend an invitation for you to join the Rat Pack."

Emily looked at Sinatra, then at Vaccine, Carnival, and Shadow in turn, before returning her gaze to the suited man. "What? I..." God almighty, what was even happening? Earlier that evening, she had just been trying to buy some food from a convenience store, and there she was at that moment, being invited to join a team, a team of... "Wait, no, hold on." A look of consternation crossed her face as she shook her head. "Aren't you people, like, uhm, villains, or something?" As a frown crossed Sinatra's face, Emily spoke again, with more anxiety than before. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude, but, uhm. You fought the Wards, didn't you? You fought, uhm, the people from the PRT? You... You fought heroes, right? So... Doesn't that make you villains?"

With a small chuckle, Sinatra responded mirthfully. "Sapling, dearest, you of _all_ people should know that the PRT are anything _but_ heroes, yes?" Emily furrowed her eyebrows, but nodded slowly. "Then it makes sense that not everybody who fights them are villains, right, Sapling dearest?" Another cautious nod from Emily, as Sinatra continued. "Certainly, the public at large and the government considers us villains, but I don't think that either I or any of the rest of the Rat Pack thinks of ourselves as such. Do we?" As Sinatra turned back to his team mates, Vaccine, Carnival, and Shadow all nodded in agreement. "Sapling, dearest, what we consider the Rat Pack to be... Is a family." Yet again, Emily's heart skipped a beat, and then another, as Sinatra's hands grabbed gently onto hers. "We're a family made up of people who have come from lives of hardship, lives where the system failed us and forced us to fend for ourselves." Emily felt moisture come to her eyes, unbidden. "But we're a family where we look out for each other, now, a family that supports each other where society won't."

The suited man frowned, as he studied the tears that flowed down Emily's cheeks. "I've studied your history, you know." Emily gasped, meeting Sinatra's eyes with her own, trembling ones. "After I heard about you, saw what the PRT was saying about you, I knew that something wasn't right, that there was something they didn't want to talk about." Sinatra gave the girl a sad smile, before continuing. "Surrendered before you were even a week old." Emily nodded, her breath hitching in her throat. "Been in the foster system your entire life." Another nod, as she felt herself become choked up. "Never stayed anywhere long, though. Been through... Abuse, I'm guessing?" Sinatra's voice was cautious, as Emily's hands squeezed down onto his. "Mmm. Vaccine was an orphan too. She'd told me about how the foster system can be." The doctor woman approached Emily, placing a hand on the girl's shoulder in a comforting gesture. "Then your trigger. Now, this is just a shot in the dark, dearest Sapling, but..." With a small smile, Sinatra offered up carefully: "Harassment, bullying?"

Emily broke down, harder than she had at any point since she had fled two months prior; as she sobbed, Sinatra allowed Vaccine to wrap the girl up in a hug, Emily taking the blonde woman's offer to cry on her shoulder. "I just... I just wanted a normal life, you know? I just..." It went on for several minutes, but nobody in the room seemed to judge, and even Carnival and Shadow gave her sympathetic looks from where they were sitting. "But nobody... But everybody... They just... I just wanted friends, and parents, and... And everything that I'm supposed..." Emily's face contorted in a variety of emotions as she clung onto Vaccine, tears and sobs eventually running dry as she began to calm down.

"I know, dearest Sapling, I know." As Emily reached a stable point, Sinatra reached out a hand toward the girl again, placing it softly onto her arm. "You just wanted everything that you were supposed to have. That life was supposed to give you. You just wanted friends. You just wanted a _family_. Am I right, Sapling?" Emily looked at the suited man and nodded, even as she saw the angle that he was about to come at her from. "That's why I think that you'll be happy in the Rat Pack, dearest Sapling. I want you to have a family, Sapling. I want to _give_ you a family, like you should have had for so many years now, like you should have _always_ had." A small squeeze on Emily's arm, accompanied by another one of Sinatra's charming smiles. "Do you want to be a part of our family, Sapling, dearest? If you really don't want to be, then none of us will force you. The choice is yours, no matter what."

Emily looked around the room again, doing the best that her naive little sixteen year old brain could do in order to analyze the expressions on the faces of the Rat Pack members. Sinatra was right, of course; more than anything else, Emily desperately just wanted a _family_ , wanted people that she could feel safe and comfortable with. Could she trust those people, though? Could she trust the charming, besuited Sinatra? Could she trust the rest of the Rat Pack? Did they have an angle on her? Was there something they were trying to get out of her? Did it matter? Was she willing to allow herself to be manipulated however Sinatra wanted, just so that she could have that sense of family with them? More than anything, why the hell had her life reached the point where she was having to make decisions like that?

Emily was scared, and she didn't know what to do; rather, Emily was scared _because_ she didn't know what to do. After watching Sinatra for what must have been a full minute, Emily bit her lip, looked away, and spoke in nervous tones. "Alright. I'll join." Sinatra's face lit up, but Emily interrupted before he could speak. "But! Uhm. Sorry. It's just... Can this like, be some sort of, erm... I don't know, like, a trial period, or something? So that I can like... Try out being a part of your family. Or. Uhm. Something. Sorry. I'm not very good at this kind of stuff. Talking, I mean. Erm. Sorry." Frowning, Emily grasped onto her sweater, digging her fingers into the fabric in an attempt to let her anxious energy out.

With a friendly chuckle, Sinatra shook his head and softly grasped onto Emily's hand again. "Sapling, dearest, it's fine. I understand. You can leave whenever you want to, no questions asked. I promise. Every step of the way, the choice is going to be _yours,_ okay, Sapling?" God above, how could Emily _not_ trust that smile?

"Okay." Squeezing Sinatra's hand back, Emily gave an apprehensive smile around the room. "Uhm. Thank you, everybody. For, erm. Saving me from the Wards. And, uhm. Inviting me into your, err. Your Rat Pack. Or your, ah. Your family, too, I guess. Erm. Thank you, is what I mean." A little bit of moisture formed in Emily's eyes again as her smile grew wider, more confident. "Thank you. For everything."

"Of course, Sapling, dearest. Of course. Now, if you'll excuse me for one moment." As Sinatra stood up and headed for the hotel room's bathroom, the other members of the Rat Pack gathered around Emily, beginning to chat, exchange civilian names, and generally get to know one another. Sinatra, for his part, calmly closed the door to the bathroom, grabbed onto the counter, looked into the mirror, and _grinned_ , viciously and victoriously.

Back in the hotel room, Emily let out a small, innocent laugh.


End file.
